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‘For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.’
1Jn_5:4
But we naturally ask, Wherewith are we to enter upon this conflict, what are to be the weapons of our warfare? St. John here anticipates the question, and at the same time answers it. ‘And this is the victory,’ he adds, ‘that overcometh the world,’ or, as it might be paraphrased, this is the means by which victory is to be realised, viz. our faith. The great weapon of our warfare is faith. And this may be shown to be the case in at least two different ways.
I. A strong belief in and a vivid realisation of another world towards which we stand in a definite relation—the apprehension of what St. Paul means when he says our citizenship is in heaven, must tend to brace us up for this conflict with the world of which we are speaking. It is stated of the Old Testament worthies mentioned in Hebrews 11 that it was by faith that they lived the lives and achieved the victories recorded of them; and this particular kind of faith seems to be indicated by a number of parenthetical sentences which are interspersed throughout the thrilling narrative; for instance, of Abraham, ‘for he looked for a city which hath foundations, Whose builder and maker is God’; and of others before his time as well as of himself, ‘they confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers on the earth’; ‘they declare plainly that they seek a country’; ‘they desire a better country, that is a heavenly.’ Of Moses, too, ‘he had respect unto the recompense of the reward’; ‘he endured as seeing Him Who is invisible.’ In all these statements it is implied that the great sustaining power—the subjective power, at any rate—which upheld them in their warfare, and nerved them for the conflict, and enabled them to face, not only privation and suffering, but even death itself, was the belief in another life and another world—in short, a vision of the unseen. St. John evidently has this in mind in regard to the Christian conflict.
(a) If a man has only a hazy apprehension of the world above and the life hereafter, which, unhappily, is all that too many have; if to him there is no definiteness in the conception he holds of the relation in which he stands towards heaven and of the prospect which awaits him hereafter, he is not likely to rise very much above the world in which at present he is living. This is real to him; the other is unreal, one might almost say ideal, and the real is sure to exercise by far the stronger influence.
(b) On the other hand, let a man once have a strong conviction of the reality of the unseen and of the certainty of the future life; let him be brought to feel that he is a citizen of another country, that is a heavenly, and that he is but a stranger and a pilgrim upon the earth; and he will use the world, as St. Paul puts it, ‘as not abusing it,’ or using it to the full; use it as a wayfaring man, merely to satisfy his present needs, and it is not likely to exercise too powerful an influence over him. He will, at any rate, be better able to resist its seductions and to rise superior to its subtle power. In this sense this is the weapon of our victory that overcometh the world, viz. our faith.
II. It is also true in another sense.—St. Paul says: ‘The life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ And again: ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ Faith is not only the faculty by which we realise the unseen, and by which the future life is assured to us; it is also the means whereby we lay hold of Christ and appropriate for ourselves the power of His risen life. Not only, as we have seen, has He overcome the world, but He calls upon His followers to do the same, and His conquest is not merely an example which they are to imitate; it represents a power which He communicates to all who are in vital union with Him by faith. Faith, then, in this sense also is the weapon of our victory. It brings down to us for the daily conflict the grace, the power, the very life of Christ. We live, yet not we, but Christ liveth in us. He gained the victory, He overcame in His own person; and the victory is being ever repeated; He is continually overcoming in the persons and experiences of His believing people.
III. To whom this glorious promise upon which we are dwelling is made.—Whatsoever is born of God, says St. John, overcometh the world, or gains this victory. The neuter or impersonal form of the expression need present no difficulty to us. It is used, says Bishop Westcott, the greatest living authority on St. John’s writings, simply to convey a universal truth. And to show that it is intended to be taken personally, St. John goes on, ‘And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith,’ and in the next verse he asks, ‘Who is he that overcometh the world?’ and replies, ‘He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God.’ ‘Whatsoever,’ then, is practically equivalent to ‘whosoever,’ and, we may take it, whosoever is born of God, to him is this promise given, to him is this victory assured. ‘Born of God’! What does this mean? Have you ever noticed that this expression ‘born of God’ is almost peculiar to St. John? No less than six times in this Epistle is the expression found, ‘born of God’ or ‘born of Him,’ meaning God, besides other phrases such as ‘sons of God,’ ‘children of God,’ which the same idea underlies. The same thing is found in the preface of his Gospel. And it is interesting to notice in passing that he alone records the Saviour’s conversation with Nicodemus, from which it is almost certain he derived the metaphor. There can be no doubt that the same thing is referred to by other writers of the New Testament under other figures. St. Paul, for instance, speaks of the man in Christ Jesus as a ‘new creature,’ or ‘creation,’ and as ‘alive from the dead,’ and St. Peter as ‘called out of darkness into light’; but it is St. John alone who seems to delight in the particular metaphor of the new (or Divine) birth. And to show what to him it represented, see what he says of it in this Epistle. In the first verse of the chapter before us (chapter 5) he writes: ‘Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.’ A personal faith in Jesus as the Saviour is one condition, and at the same time an evidence of this Divine birth. In the second chapter and twenty-ninth verse he writes, ‘Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God.’ A godly or righteous life is another condition and evidence. In the third chapter and ninth verse he says, ‘Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin’; and, again, in the fifth chapter and eighteenth verse, ‘sinneth not.’ I do not take this to mean that he is without sin, for he has previously written, ‘If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves’; but he does not sin wilfully, deliberately; he does not indulge in sin. And lastly, we have the expression of our text, which occurs more than once, ‘Whatsoever, or whosoever, is born of God overcometh the world.’
IV. And now to apply the whole thing practically.—Is it possible that the failure of many to carry out their good resolutions, and to live the sober, the godly, and the righteous life, is due to the fact that they know nothing, as a matter of personal experience, of this new or Divine birth; that they are not in vital union with Him Who alone can strengthen them for the conflict; that indeed, as far as they fight at all, they are fighting in their own strength? My friends, I would appeal to you to live upon a different principle. The promise—the inspiring assurance of our text—is specifically addressed: whosoever is born of God is assured that he shall overcome the world. All others are more likely, nay are certain, to be overcome. And do not water down the expression to mean simply those who are sprinkled with the waters of baptism. Your own common sense and your own experience must tell you that it means something more than that. All the great promises connected with the future life are to those who thus overcome.
—
Prebendary H. Askwith.
THE VICTORY OF FAITH
Our Lord likens the moral quality called faith to the vital force which lives and works in nature. ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed … nothing shall be impossible unto you’ (St. Mat_17:20). There is a power in life—even in its feeblest forms—which no weight of matter which is inert and lifeless can long resist. The dead mass, even of a mountain, must in course of time succumb under the resistless attacks of the smallest seedling, and has in itself the germ of vitality, and therefore of growth and development. I never see a dismantled fortress covered with the ivy that is steadily removing it, stone by stone, to its final destruction without reflecting that that ivy was once ‘as a grain of mustard seed,’ when those stern bulwarks and ramparts were deemed the impregnable citadel of armed men. Now our Lord tells us that faith (as He uses the word) possesses a similar vital force.
I. Faith is a quality which ensures man’s growth and expansion.—It does not operate suddenly or effect miraculous changes; it takes time like the grain of mustard seed, but it is victorious in the end even against overwhelming odds. In one way or another all the greatest things we know of have been and are achieved by its power. It is faith that removes mountains of difficulty, that overcomes the manifold dangers, oppositions, weaknesses, impossibilities, of this mortal life of ours, and casts them into the sea of human triumph.
(a) Take the realm of commerce by way of example. What is it that enables a man to launch forth into enterprises that startle the world but faith in the practicability of some great scheme which to the cautious and prudent seems only foolhardy and chimerical?
(b) What is it that buoys up the lonely scientific worker through years of painstaking calculation and experiment but faith in the certainty of an ultimate discovery?
(c) Or what, in the sphere of intellectual effort, accounts for the difference between the good or the bad teacher but that one believes and the other does not believe in the efficacy of the training and instruction it is their business to give? The good teacher is one who believes that his or her efforts willl never be wasted, however unpromising the soil on which the good seed is sown.
(d) It is faith which has inspired and carried through all the crusades against evil and all the reforms and revolutions that have helped to rid the world of tyrannies, abuses, cruelties, and depravities of every kind.
II. Faith is the conquering principle in religion.—For Christian faith is not a thing apart from one’s ordinary human nature and imposed upon it from without; it is the expansion of an original inherent moral quality, common to us all; it is the spiritualisation of a natural faculty; it is the daily energising, vitalising power in which we live and do our best work brought into contact with the Divine power. So glorified it overcomes the world—the worldly spirit with its carnal aims, countless temptations, and unholy methods, being the hardest thing there is to overcome. But even unglorified it has this overcoming power, and if we only get to see this clearly, we shall not find so much difficulty in transferring to the life of religion a quality which we have learnt to regard as the supreme essential in every secular sphere. That is my object, to demonstrate the saving power of faith as a moral principle of our being, without which all great achievements are impossible.
III. The example of great men.—It has been said that reverence of great names is the secular side of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the communion of saints, but it is necessary to remember that such reverence, if it is to elevate and ennoble us, must be directed aright, must be bestowed on what is really worthy of it. We must see that, when we let ourselves be inspired by the luminous idea of a great character, we take it in its purest form, free from the details, exaggerations, and prejudices of its historic setting. It would be as grossly unfair to judge Oliver Cromwell as merely or mainly the executioner of Charles I as it would be to honour Nelson merely or mainly as the hero of Trafalgar. What we are morally bound to look for in a great man is: first, that he shall have worked for principles which we believe to be fruitful, and which are our own by virtue of that belief; and second, that he shall have been the inspirer of his own action in virtue of character and therefore worthy of admiration and imitation.
Archdeacon H. E. J. Bevan.
Illustration‘Our great national hero Nelson worked for great principles—for fruitful principles, the value of which we realise even more now than they did a century ago. The great victory of Trafalgar, which secured for us the undisputed sovereignty of the sea, meant the liberty of our land, the extension of our empire, the development of our commerce, and the opportunity of moulding and building up our national character on nobler Christian lines, independent of continental corruptions. Captain Mahan writes of Nelson’s “humble and sincere gratitude to God for rendering him the chief instrument of deliverance to his native land,” and how, “by his devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, he sought continually to keep himself in hand.” His last prayer, offered up on the morn of the battle in sight of the opposing fleet, tells us why they buried him in the centre of St. Paul’s, immediately under the very cross itself which surmounts the dome. “May the great God Whom I worship grant to my country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory, and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him Who made me, and may His blessings alight on my endeavours to serve my country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen! Amen! Amen!” Here is a prayer which breathes throughout the simplest, purest, highest faith of all—it is in truth that victory which overcometh the world.’
THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD
I. The opposition of the world.
(a) It may arise from earthly possessions. These, when rightly used, have proved a great blessing; but, when wrongly used, a great curse (St. Mat_19:16-24; 2Ti_4:10).
(b) It may arise from carnal honours. The human heart too frequently desires these. But carnal honours dazzle only for a time; and often, when possessed, seem of no value. Their pursuit, however, diverts the soul from the great business of life.
(c) It may arise from sensual pleasures—the heart absorbed with fleshly vanities has neither time nor thought for spiritual realities.
(d) It may arise from bitter adversities. Prosperity lifts up, adversity casts down: the one soothes and flatters the individual, the other begets hard and wicked thoughts of Providence.
II. The triumph of faith.
(a) Faith is a spiritual principle. Not a train of ideas floating in the head, but a disposition of the heart (Rom_10:10). Cherished there, it proves itself a living, active principle of irresistible power.
(b) Faith is controlled by Divine truth. In every strait of worldly opposition the believer asks God, ‘What wilt Thou have me to do?’ He has not long to wait for the answer. Faith has then a foundation on which to rest; and this is so firm that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against it (Dan_3:16-18).
(c) Faith is sustained by God Himself. He teaches the hands to war and the fingers to fight (Hebrews 11).
(d) Faith is triumphant over the world. It is spoken of, indeed, not merely as the means of victory, but as already a victory in itself. The issue of the conflict, then, is not uncertain.